Arris, an image metadata editor

Arris is a minimalistic application that can be used to edit the metadata of digital photos.

The currently supported metadata entries are

• author (Xmp.dc.creator): The name of the person who took the photo (only one author is supported).
• date time (Xmp.dc.date): The date and time when the photo was taken (UTC offsets supported).
• city (Xmp.iptcExt.City): The city in which the photo was taken.
• country (Xmp.iptcExt.CountryName): The country in which the photo was taken.
• title (Xmp.dc.title): Title caption of the photo. Check configuration below to select language correctly.
• description (Xmp.dc.description): A more elaborate description of the photo.
• tags (Xmp.dc.subject): Keywords for the photo.

The metadata entries are saved as XMP tags, and they can thus be read by other applications.

The aim of Arris is to be a simple GUI program with minimal dependencies. It is meant as a simple personal tool to manage private photos locally on disk. Photo import and editing will not be supported and should be done with separate tools. Currently only photo metadata editing is supported, but the eventual goal is to support saving the images in a simple local and searchable database. There will not be any integration with any cloud service as this software is intended for local and private use.

Installation and dependencies

Running Arris is as simple as cloning the repository and running python3 arris.py. Arris was developed on Python 3.13, but it should run on earlier versions of Python just fine. For windowing, Arris uses Qt version 6, so your operating system should have the necessary libraries installed. The necessary Python package dependencies are listed in requirements.txt. In addition, Arris needs the command line utilities exiv2, magick, and jpegtran. On most distros, the first is included in the package exiv2, the second in ImageMagick, and the last in libjpeg-turbo or similar.

Brief usage instructions

The metadata editor is on the Editor tab of the Arris main window (the Browser tab is empty and is to be implemented in the future). Use the left panel to navigate to a directory with photos you want to organize. The loaded photos are then displayed in the next panel (only JPG,PNG,CR2,RW2 files are supported at the moment). When a photo is selected, the third panel will display its XMP metadata (if it exists), and the photo is displayed in the final panel. The date time is loaded from an EXIF tag (typically saved by digital cameras) if the XMP date time tag is not found.

Once the metadata is loaded, you can edit it using the third panel's entries. The tags are listed as comma-separated entries. There is a tag editor that opens by clicking the button next to the tag entry, but it currently does not load any tags to be added.

Once you have edited the metadata, you can save the edits by clicking the save button in the top-left corner. No edits to files on disk are made unless you click this button. Any unsaved photos are displayed in bold in the second panel.

If you want to delete a photo, select it, and click the Delete button. The corresponding file is deleted only if the save button is pressed. If you want to cancel the deletion, click the undelete button to prevent all files from being deleted.

Editing multiple photos at once

To avoid repetitive tasks, multiple photos can be selected in the second panel. The program logic is then somewhat different than when editing a single file. Given a metadata entry X (say author), if all selected photos have a common value for X, then it is displayed in the corresponding field. Edits to this field are reflected in all selected photos. If the photos do not have a common value for X, then the corresponding field is disabled, and no edits are made for the selected files. If the field is manually enabled via the checkbox next to it, the (noncommon) values for X are overwritten with the value that is typed in the field. It is best if you experiment with this feature. As long as you do not press the save button, nothing will happen to the files on the disk.

Notice that the date time and the UTC offset entries are always disabled when multiple files are selected (as it rarely makes sense for photos to have exactly the same timestamp). If these fields are manually enabled, then a common value can be set.

Renaming files

Edited files can be renamed by clicking the Rename button (the new file name will be displayed) in the second panel. Currently a photo is renamed as YYYYDDMM_HHMMSS.ext according to the date time entry (the UTC offset is ignored). The corresponding files are not renamed unless the save button is pressed.

Rotating files.

Clicking the Rotate button rorates the selected photos 90 degrees clockwise. Again, the rotation is not performed on disk unless the save button is clicked. Arris resets the Exif.Image.Orientation tag appropriately so that other applications will show the rotated image correctly.

UTC offsets and time adjustment

The UTC offset field (adjacent to the date time field) indicates in which UTC offset the local time in the date time field should be interpreted in. For example if the date time field reads 7.8.2024 12:48:52 and the UTC offset is 3.00, then it means that the photo was taken at the time instant 2024-08-07T12:48:52+03:00 (ISO format). Whenever the UTC offset is adjusted, the local time is left as it is. If you need the local time to change when the UTC offset changes, you need to type this in manually.

To aid in editing photos that have incorrect date times (wrong date settings in the camera), you can add and subtract the date time fields and UTC offset fields of multiple photos via the time adjuster. Suppose that you have multiple photos selected, and you want to add one hour to the local time and one hour to the UTC offset (due to, e.g., daylight savings). Then click the button Adjust time and set Hours to 1 and UTC to 1, and click OK. Now all selected photos have been adjusted as desired.

Notice that fractional UTC offsets are supported with 2 digit accuracy. Namely, if the UTC offset in Arris is 2.50 then the ISO format is trailed with +02:30.

Photo optimization

Arris uses the jpegtran utility to optimize the DFT coefficients of saved JPG files. This is a lossless transformation that saves some disk space. In addition to this, Arris strips embedded EXIF thumbnails from the photos to save a bit more space. Photo optimization can be disabled by unchecking the box Optimize saved files.

Configuration file

The file ~/.arris.cfg can be used to configure some settings of Arris. This file is in the ini format, and an example configuration file is found in the repository. Here is an explanation of the settings.

• general
  • default_language: The default language of the title and description XMP tags. The language information will be saved in the XMP metadata. Default: en-US.
  • default_time_zone: Default time zone when interpreting date times without UTC offset (e.g., when reading date times from EXIF time stamps). The time zone should be given as a string accepted by the pytz library. Default: UTC+0.
• completion
  • author: Comma separated list of autocomplete values for the author field.
  • city: Comma separated list of autocomplete values for the city field.
  • country: Comma separated list of autocomplete values for the country field.